


On Tea and Loneliness

by a_case_for_wonder



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Drabble, Dysfunctional Family, Family Issues, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, POV Caduceus Clay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-01-31 17:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21449884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_case_for_wonder/pseuds/a_case_for_wonder
Summary: "there is a part of me that is very lonely"Caduceus needs something from the Gentleman. Well, maybe two things.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 80





	On Tea and Loneliness

**Author's Note:**

> When will Taliesin stop effing blindsiding me with shit like this? Hopefully never.

Caduceus Clay knows criminals. Well, he knows people - you pick things up, seeing folks at their most vulnerable over and over, and growing up in a big family, and growing up in a secluded grove where you track the worry in your mother’s face like tracking the seasons, the ever-coming winter. You learn to look, when the first spots of purple on once-green leaves mean the fence has to be moved and re-enchanted again. Caduceus has sharp eyes. But he also just knows criminals; outcasts; outsiders of all sorts, really. He knows there isn’t a person in the world without some kind of code, some internal logic, even if that logic is just selfishness or greed. And it often isn't just that.

The Clays buried all kinds of dead in the Grove, after all. Dead that needed a sacred rest. Dead that couldn’t be mourned in the usual places. Dead that no one else would take. The Mother returned their bodies to the earth just the same, as tender with the gift of their flesh as for that of any king. 

_"He wasn’t a good man, I don’t think,”_ a woman had told him once, staring down over a fresh grave already half-covered in mushrooms and creeping, flowering ivy. That had been a long time ago. His first season alone in the Grove. Back when he’d still looked to the road, sure that today was the day a Clay would come striding back toward him down the path, a cure in their pocket and a great adventure to share. 

_“Maybe,” _Caduceus had said. He hadn’t met the man alive. He knew people, but there wasn’t much, short of some rather drastic magic, you could do to get a read on the dead. _“All the more reason for him to become something beautiful now.” _

He pours the criminal - the person - called the Gentleman a cup of tea. He lets the fact that it comes from the Grove seem mysterious, exotic. Valuable. Caduceus doesn’t always understand books or accounts, but he understands the concept of value, worth, trade. Everyone wants to make a deal when it comes to death, one way or another. He’s made a few, in his time. He’ll make a few more before it’s up. 

“The Blooming Grove is dying,” Caduceus Clay tells the kingpin of the criminal underworld of the largest city he’s ever been in. It's as final as he's ever put it. _My home is dying. I left it to die. Or: I left it in order to die. I don’t know which one it is anymore. _

“My family had to leave, I-" 

It’s both harder and easier to say when it’s the Gentleman, someone who has his own cares but likely sees a sack of gold coins where Caduceus’s heart should be. Still. He thinks about the stillness in the Gentleman’s face in that split second when Jester had become Marion, the blanche that exposed just the edges of that mask of composed indifference. 

"I don't know where they are. I don't know if they're okay. It's been a long time and-"

Caduceus knows people. He knows that, strange as it seems, often times people are inclined to like you best when they feel they've done you a favor. He takes a calculated risk. Or maybe it’s just more radical honesty, drawing out of him like blood to a jar; another bit of trust with the price covered up. 

“There is a part of me that is very lonely,” he admits, and watches the careful way the Gentleman’s face doesn’t move. 

He misses them. Misses them in a way that sometimes feels like being lost in a crowd when he's in an empty room; their absence crowds in on him, presses in like the edges of the Grove's sickness. But sometimes, he tucks himself beneath the weight of it at night like a blanket, lets it hold him to the earth. 

"Family is so complicated," he says. It shouldn't feel as nice as it does, admitting his long-ago dishonesties, his occasional cruelties, to a man who would likely consider such things pittances. But Caduceus has never been able to resist the allure of someone else's problems. So if his confession of failings he can't apologize for comes out half-proud, well. It's gotten him this far. "A unique, exquisite complication."

Caduceus watches the Gentleman watch him. Watches him take a long, excruciatingly neutral sip of tea. Then he says, as simply as he can, "You should tell her." 

That stillness again. The mask, which hadn't cracked but had at least been _visible, _melds back against the Gentleman's face until it's perfect. The hint of a great sea thing's spine sinking back beneath the surf. 

"Thank you for the tea."

It's a dismissal, and Caduceus doesn't push any further. He wants to be honest, and he wants to be kind, and he can't push and be both, now. So he takes his pot but leaves some tea and retreats, and counts himself ahead, as far as dealings with criminals go.

That night, he dreams of the Grove. It surrounds him as it once must have been, an expansive, lush green space. Then it begins to collapse. Each time it shrinks the cloak of it folds over itself, pressing into him more, dragging at him. Heavier and heavier. Folding in like he is being folded into a paper star, smaller and tighter and denser and_ heavier. _He thinks he cries out, but there hasn't been anyone here to hear him for a long time. When the last fold collapses over his head, there is only darkness. 

But when he wakes, Jester's smile is closer to real than it has been in days, and that's something. That's something.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos/comments loved dearly. Yell at me about this firbolg!!
> 
> and you can find me on tumblr, where I am always yelling about this show these days @a-case-for-wonder


End file.
